Project Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of Unidentified flying objects (UFOs) conducted by the United States Air Force. It was the second revival of such study, started in 1952, and was active up to January 1970, as it had been ordered for termination in December 1969.
Previous Projects
The UFO study was initiated under Project Sign in 1947 during the flying saucer craze. Project Sign was officially inconclusive regarding the cause of the sightings. It was succeeded by Project Grudge, which concluded that all UFOs were natural phenomena or other misinterpretations, although it also stated that 23 percent of the reports were inexplicable.
Project Blue Book
Project Blue Book collected 12,618 UFO reports, and concluded that most them were misidentifications of natural phenomena (clouds, stars, et cetera) or conventional aircraft. A few were considered hoaxes. 701 of the reports--about six percent--were classified as unknown. The reports were archived and are available under the Freedom of Information Act, but names and other personal information of all witnesses have been blacked out.
The first head of the project was captain Edward J. Ruppelt. By his order, a standard reporting form for UFOs was developed. He was also the one who officially coined the term UFO, to replace the inaccurate and suggestive flying saucer, which had been used to that point. He resigned from the air force some years later, and wrote the book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, which described the study of UFOs by United States Air Force from 1947 to 1955.
Astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek was the scientific consultant of the project. He worked for the project up to its termination and initially created the categorization which has been extended and is known today as Close encounters. He was a pronounced skeptic when he started, but said that his feelings changed to a more waverly skeptism during the research. In the 1970s he was somewhat of an authority among UFO researchers due to his experience. He spoke at a United Nations General Assembly on the subject, and was a technical advisor for the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
External links
Blue Book Archive (http://www.bluebookarchive.org) Searchable online database containing the National Archive's Project Blue Book microfilm collection
The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects - Edward J. Ruppelt (http://www.nicap.org/rufo/contents.htm) The book on-line
Project Blue Book in FBI's FOIA reading room (http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/bluebook.htm) A summary of the project
Project Blue Book unexplained cases with witness names (http://www.chez.com/lesovnis/htm/bluebooku47.htm) An unofficial website with individual summaries of the 700 unexplained cases
PROJECT AQUARIUS Briefing Document and is said to have succeeded in 1964 when a USAF intelligence officer met two other aliens at a prearranged location in a desert in New Mexico.
Project Blue Book, it seems, was just a low-level collection and disinformation program created under Project Sign, December 1947, which evolved into Project Grudge, December 1948 to cover up the true investigation into the alien presence on Earth.
A project, which compiled the history of alien presence and their interaction with humans on this planet for the last 25,000 years and finishing with the Basque people who live in the mountainous country on the border of France and Spain and the Syrians.
The Project might have faded away altogether except for a series of sightings at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, which resulted in the military itself criticizing the Air Force for its poor investigation of something that seemed to be a threat to national security.
The death knell for ProjectBluebook was heard in April, 1966, when the House Armed Services Committee recommended that the Air Force contract with a University for a scientific study of UFOs.
On December 17, 1969, ProjectBluebook was closed and the veil of secrecy had been completely drawn around whatever investigation of UFOs was being conducted by the military.
Feeds |
Contact